Myth for American Kids

Once upon a time after a Classics conference I and a number of other conferees took a voluntary bump from our flight home. We sat in a bar and did a post mortem on the conference; it turned out all of the others were elementary school teachers who'd just done a presentation for their NEH grant. The subject was how to present myth to grade schoolers.

All of the teachers agreed that few books existed for young readers dealing with myth in an authentic way. It seems publishers don't think the actual stories will grab their audience-- either the kids themselves, or their parents-- so they have to change them.

For little kids, the solution is to make the stories nicer. D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, a trusted classic in the field, bleeds all the authenticity from the Pandora story. The author absolves Zeus of all blame for  the pithos (storage jar) with the ills. Apparently, the ills were supposed to make men pull together and be nice to each other, "but their sufferings made them wicked instead of good, as Zeus had hoped." Pandora herself has an insatiably curious instead of a consciously malevolent mind, so it's really not her fault she opened the jar.

(Hesiod, who gave us Pandora, says Hermes, a trickster god, gave her a shameless mind and thievish character, kuneon te noon kai epiklopon ethos).

For middle-grade readers, twisting the stories into jokes seems the order of the day. Scholastic publishes a series called Myth-o-mania, which purports to tell the inside story of the Greek myths. One scoop: the Gorgons invented Gorgonzola cheese. This type of retelling reinforces the impression that the myths are absurd and a poor excuse for modern science.

The idea seems to be that the Greek stories themselves do not translate to the American ethos, especially as we present that belief system to children. Zeus, a god similar in some ways to our benevolent monotheistic god, could never intend to give mortals a bad time just because he wanted to punish Prometheus.

In other words, you don't want a bedtime story to become a seminar on comparative theology.

But there is a group of young people who don't get the myths bleached to American publishers' standards: modern Greek schoolkids. Their culture is just as sophisticated and supposedly non-pagan as ours-- maybe more-- but Greek Mythology is a required subject in school. And you can bet the children learn the stories as originally told.

In a few weeks I'm going to be traveling to Greece and Cyprus on a Fulbright Seminar, joining 15 of my colleagues for in-depth historical, archeological, and cross-cultural learning. My own required research project concerns how Greek schoolchildren learn Greek mythology. I hope to examine curricula, interview students and teachers, and investigate how the Greeks value their cultural heritage despite its unsuitability to a modern, monotheistic and scientific world-view.

I also hope to post preliminary findings in BwP while abroad. The Internet is worldwide, and where's there's an Internet cafe, there's an opportunity for me to help you follow my progress. I'll be leaving for my orientation in New York City on May 26 and finishing in Cyprus around the end of June.

If you're interested in my project, have a question, or maybe just want me to buy you a t-shirt while I'm there, zap me an email at [email protected].

In the meantime, I'm always up for a question on Greek myth. And thanks, as always, for reading.

Comments

[Paul Baxter]

I like this post. I find the question of what the old Greeks really believed about their myths and how that played into their lives to be an interesting one. Not interesting enough so far to make me read the literature on the subject, but I'm curious.

[DF]

Hey, Paul. Thanks for the kind word. You just earned a post on the subject of what the Greeks believed, how and when, coming soon.

You wonder how those poor fools could have believed all that stuff about gods and goddesses-- and then you consider some of the things we swallow today. Not much has changed.

[Scott]

Beautiful pics. Great blog.